Meta’s choice to close CrowdTangle, a crucial tool for monitoring misinformation on its platforms, has raised worries among researchers, journalists, and policymakers. The scheduled closure date for CrowdTangle, August 14, comes shortly before the intense U.S. presidential election season, a time when misinformation typically surges and proliferates. Despite introducing the Meta Content Library as an alternative, this new tool is only available to a limited group of users, primarily academic and nonprofit researchers, prompting concerns about the visibility and supervision of content on social media in crucial election periods.
CrowdTangle, acquired by Meta in 2016, has been instrumental in providing visibility into the spread of information and misinformation on Facebook and Instagram. It allowed a broad array of users, including for-profit news organizations, to track trending topics and gauge the virality of specific posts and narratives. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that many of these users will no longer have access to similar capabilities under the new system. Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, provided a five-month notice for the closure, which he claimed “should give people time to complete any current projects they are using it for,” according to conversations with WSJ.
Despite assurances from Clegg that the Meta Content Library and API tools will provide comprehensive data, including “near real-time public content from Pages, Posts, Groups, and Events on Facebook,” users are skeptical. Cody Buntain, a researcher from the University of Maryland, termed the timing of the discontinuation as “really bad,” given the impending need for data analysis throughout the election campaigns. Additionally, concerns about the Meta Content Library’s current limitations have been raised by beta testers, highlighting issues such as lack of geographic-specific data and restrictions on downloading data about elected officials’ public posts.
The scrutiny over Meta’s management of misinformation tools is not new. CrowdTangle has been a double-edged sword for the tech giant, being both a valuable resource for external oversight and a source of internal contention. A 2021 New York Times report unveiled that the tool had caused discord within the company, with executives debating over the extent of data shared publicly. The internal conflict intensified after reports using CrowdTangle data revealed patterns of engagement that were unflattering to the company’s narrative about content spread and popularity.
As alternatives, Meta is directing users who do not meet the criteria for Meta Content Library access towards third-party offerings or a Meta Business Suite feature called Insights. However, Insights does not serve the same purpose as CrowdTangle, being more focused on the results of organic and paid social media efforts rather than trends in misinformation spread.
The decision to sunset CrowdTangle is indicative of a broader industry shift away from the transparency movement that CrowdTangle once symbolized. The conversation now pivots to whether the visibility and real-time analysis provided by CrowdTangle can be preserved or will be deliberately obscured by platforms. As researchers and civil society grapple with the limitations of the Meta Content Library, the tech community, and its stakeholders, remain divided on the impact this closure will have on the integrity of the upcoming election cycle. The skepticism is fueled by past experiences, as Rebekah Tromble, director of the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics at George Washington University and a beta tester for the new tool, observed, “Meta has a track record of making big promises to researchers, getting positive press coverage, and then backtracking.”
Relevant articles:
– “Really bad timing”: Meta is killing misinformation analysis tool on August 14
– Facebook is killing a data tool that helps researchers monitor Facebook, Quartz, Thu, 14 Mar 2024 15:22:15 GMT
– How CrowdTangle predicted the future, Platformer, Fri, 15 Mar 2024 00:01:37 GMT
– How Meta, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube plan to address 2024 election misinformation, Poynter, Fri, 07 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT